Reply To: Mon 17 March: Greece and Revisionist Environmental History

Nik Petek
Reply to Archie Davies

While I agree with your statement, we still need to keep in mind that those writings and articles that Rackham criticises are used by academics from other disciplines. Furthermore, if those writings are not based on either a fact or a factoid, they themselves might promote factoids and unsubstantiated believes. But from Ramsey’s reflection I gather that badly substantiated claims used to be part of ‘traditional historical writing’. The articles Rackham refers to are from the 80s, when a different academia to today’s was in place, and while that might have been good academia then, it was certainly not good enough to survive the 90s.